THE last year was not the best of years for St Michael’s Church in Tenbury.

The church was beset by delays to building work, with a further blow coming in the form of the discovery of dry rot in the beautiful timber vaulting and the intense work necessary to eliminate it.

All the building work is now complete and the Parochial Church Council is very grateful to the David and Christine Lloyd Jones Foundation for providing the new facilities the church now boasts for the benefit of the local community.

"Fingers are now crossed for a better 2025, especially with news that the college is to reopen in the autumn," said a spokesperson.

The church's annual music and events programme has now been published and is full of variety in addition to old favourites. The first event, on Saturday March 29 at 4pm, has become an annual event already. It features the Hereford Sixth Form College Musica Academia choir.

Under director Tim Pratt, the choir is presenting a varied programme of music, some familiar, some less so. The most substantial work in the programme will be the Requiem by the 19th-century French composer, Charles Gounod, a rarely heard work for four soloists and a choir.

The singers will be accompanied by a string quartet, harp and organ, in an arrangement by the choir's director. Music by J.S. Bach and Faure's lovely Cantique de Jean Racine will complete the choral element. The remainder of the programme will comprise a song cycle by Henry Vaughan, and the string quartet will play one of Haydn's quartets. It promises to be a delightful programme, and the students of the Hereford 6th Form College will rise splendidly to the challenge